Submission to the General Insurance Code Governance Committee Monitoring and Compliance Priorities consultation
FCVic has made a submission to the General Insurance Code Governance Committee’s consultation on its 2023-24 Monitoring and Compliance Priorities.
The submission drew on the experiences and insights of disaster recovery financial counsellors, and focused on Parts 9 & 10 of the General Insurance Code, which deal with customers experiencing vulnerability and financial hardship.
Through their work, disaster recovery financial counsellors have identified widespread poor behaviour by insurers that breach the provisions of the Code around vulnerability and hardship. The failure of insurers to recognise and appropriately support customers experiencing vulnerability or hardship has been shown to exacerbate customers’ distress and – in a post-disaster context – impede their recovery.
Our submission makes a number of recommendations to the Code Governance Committee to prioritise these parts of the Code, and to work with the financial sector to improve insurer practices.